Sun Produces First Cycle 24 X-Class Solar Flare

radioweather writes "For the first time since solar cycle 24 began, the sun produced a massive X-class solar flare, the strongest type of flare event. This comes from sunspot group 1158, which produced an M-class solar flare on Sunday. The EVE X-ray imager on the solar dynamics observatory shows a bright explosion on the sun, so bright it made a lens flare. The last X-class solar flare was on December 13th, 2006 and was part of solar cycle 23. Look for spectacular auroras in a couple days as the slower Coronal Mass Ejection hits earth. This will be a test of how well our newest technology handles stray energy from such solar disruptions."

Comments

Stop this already... It's Oracle

[c0lo]

'Nuf said

am I the only one?

[youn]

for a second I thought it was about a 24 core new server from sun... then I realized the solar flare was not the oracle purchase :)

start worrying?

[louic]

How is this informative if we do not know if we need to be worried or not? Please let us know if we need to start worrying or not, just like in this post earlier on slashdot.

Re:start worrying?

[Ceriel Nosforit]

No, you don't need to worry about it. You just happen to know about it. If you did need to worry about it there was nothing you could do about it.

Re:start worrying?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

How is this informative if we do not know if we need to be worried or not?

The best thing to do, is to monitor announcements from from your local authorities on radio and television . . . um, which will not be working, because they were trashed from the soft X-rays from the solar flare. OK, let's try again. Wait for the police car to drive by and give announcements over the patrol car's megaphone . . . which will also not work, because the car ignition and megaphone were fried by the X-rays, and the policeman is hiding in his cellar anyway, because only an idiot would go outside into a hail of X-rays.

OK, just wrap yourself in tinfoil, and go outside at night and look for the aurora borealis or aurora australis, depending on which hemisphere you live in. The aurorae are much more impressive if you drop some acid before observing them. As a matter of fact, if the acid is good enough, you don't even need the aurorae to see funky lights.

Re:start worrying?

[Opportunist]

Duh! It's a thermonuclear reactor! Of COURSE it is hellish dangerous! Why do you think it was built so far away?

Re:start worrying?

[dreamchaser]

How is this informative if we do not know if we need to be worried or not?

Please let us know if we need to start worrying or not, just like in this post earlier on slashdot.

If a news outlet tells you that there is a massive thunderstorm coming do they have to spell out whether to take precautions or not? If an X-Class flare is sighted and they tell you that a massive CME is going to head our way, do you really have to have it spelled out? Besides, unless you are planning on building a Faraday cage what exactly can you do about it if we have a severe solar weather event? Backup data? You don't do that already?

By the way spaceweather.com is your friend if you give a shit about such matters. You know, like how you might hear a blurb on the news about possible bit thunderstorms so you go to a weather site for more info?

People are so lazy these days, wanting everything spoon fed to them.

Re:start worrying?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There are outcomes between "sun comes up, sun goes down" and "Sun gives the Van Allen belt a good hard shove and everybody eats ionized death"...

Solar behavior capable of knocking out a bunch of satellites, or affecting the power grid, is worrisome; but can be mitigated(or at least expected and then repaired) for various levels of nuisance and expense.

If, for example, next week is going to be a especially terrible time to go into the wilderness with nothing but your trusty GPS and satellite phone, you can't do anything about what the sun is going to do to that infrastructure; but you can avoid relying on it...

Re:start worrying?

[Lumpy]

And that is why you dont have any superpowers like the rest of us.

I go out naked during Xray events while holding a TV antenna high in the air.... I can now get stains out of any carpet with my mind!

Re:start worrying?

[epiphani]

Here's a bit more context.

Sunspot 1158 is currently facing towards earth. This is not terribly uncommon - but X series flares are relatively rare. This is the strongest flare in the last four years. What is notable about this event is that it's an X series flare AND its pointed straight at us. It's not in the top ten (X9.0 is the bottom of the top ten, and its a logarithmic scale) of what we've observed, BUT it is the strongest flare in modern history that has been pointed straight at us.

The CME will arrive in 24-48 hours. What the effects of the geomagnetic storm we're about to get will actually be, nobody's completely sure. The most likely case is a K7 or K8 geomagnetic storm. See this scale - and expect G3 or G4.

Realistically, this will mean some power utilities are paying very close attention to their systems and having to tweak things. HAMs will definitely notice it, and cell phones may have some issues (not that you'd notice much).

In summary, if you're anywhere north of 45 or 50 degrees lat and have some clear skies, get outside tonight and tomorrow night. Should be a good show.

Oracle

[sakdoctor]

I did think Oracle for a second, but I quickly progressed to worrying if my computers could withstand a

Lens flare?

[atomicthumbs]

That's not a lens flare, that's a CCD artifact caused by the intensity of the light (X-rays, in this case) saturating the CCD sensor, and leaving that column saturated as it's moved across the sensor to be read out.
Read up.

All joking aside...

[ATestR]

The significance of this solar flare is not that it could or will be a danger to Earth... it is that is a sign that the sun is waking back up. Anyone who has been watching for long can tell you that there haven't been any significant sun spots for quite a while. It is possible that this is the reason behind some of the cold weather that the northern hemisphere has been experiencing this winter.

Re:What a coincidence.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Eh, that's just one of the audiophile wet-ops teams. After a few thousand rounds of being mocked about $600 ethernet cables and $2,000/meter silver IEC cables, some of the tighter wound ones go rogue and start striking back at the uncaring world that will never understand or accept them.

In addition to the onboard sound(an unforgivable aural insult), you may find that your system and backups have been selectively purged of all lossy-compressed media. In especially severe cases, all audio may be purged(it was only CD "quality" to begin with, and even lossless compression makes audio sound flat and lifeless. It has to do with jitter, you wouldn't understand.)

i'll be ok

[circletimessquare]

i only use monster brand digital AV cables. the best buy salesman assured me they were designed specifically to resist x-class solar flares

Re:From NOAA.gov website

[geekoid]

but it's the largest one pointed directly at us in the modern era of electronics.

Figures...

[rnturn]

The local forecast from NOAA says that it's going to get cloudy by tomorrow night and stay that way for several days. No aurora viewing for us it seems. Another typical weather forecast obscuring yet another astronomical event for folks in the Chicago area. I suppose we should all consider ourselves lucky we were able to see the aurora incident several years ago. It may be years before we get the chance again.